Planting Liberally

Despite a brief hiatus last week, my impromptu labor links roundup appears to be picking up steam! There are a bunch of interesting things to read this week, so be sure to check them out:

• Another key court case is coming down the pike: New York New York Hotel, LLC. The key issue in the case boils down to who is an "employee" under the definition of the National Labor Relations Act. Prof. Ellen Dannin, whose writing I linked to in the last round-up, wrote about this case at Working Life and filed an amicus brief arguing that NLRA defines employee as "any employee", not just the employee of the workplace being organized. This is a key point: the framers of NLRA explicitly intended for the act to create solidarity across workplaces, not just within a workplace, and defined "employee" expansively in order to allow employees of one workplace to help organize employees of another. From a legal perspective, this case is very interesting, because it highlights just how broadly NLRA overthrows basic common law concepts like "employee". From an organizing perspective, this case is incredibly important, because it could, expand the rights to organize considerably, or limit them. Check out Prof. Dannin's post, and an excerpt from her amicus brief, here.
• Global Labor Strategies posted a comprehensive critique of the UAW-GM deal, which argues that UAW missed an opportunity to "strategically retreat", thereby sowing seeds for later victories, in this case. The post also includes some interesting labor history. With the GM deal apparently approved and the Chrysler deal perhaps moving in the same direction, the VEBA-style agreements appear to have considerable momentum. Nevertheless, anyone interested in making sense of the deal, and possibly getting a glimpse of the Ford contract, should certainly check out this analysis.
• A new site, We Are Labor, which aggregates labor news on the blogosphere has just launched. Similar in some ways to the LabourStart US, We Are Labor focuses less on news accounts, and more on aggregating blog posts from a variety of sources - union blogs, progressive blogs, etc. The site is heavy on RSS and aggregation, so fire up your blogreader and check it out!
• In news which is a bit old by now, the labor endorsements have been mildly disappointing to the Edwards campaign. Edwards, whose chosen base constituency could be described as "labor plus netroots", has picked up some key endorsements (notably Carpenters, USW and UAW, as well as a raft of state SEIU councils). But Clinton and Obama have combined to deny him some very big endorsements, notably the national SEIU endorsement, and rack up a couple of their own - most recently and notably, Clinton's endorsement from the AFT. Although I generally try to keep tabs on what's up in the world of labor and am very interested in organizing and strategies for building the strength and reach of the labor movement, I don't really follow the union endorsement stories. I'm also firmly undecided in terms of who I support for president (although major bonus points to anyone who can guess how I voted on the DFA endorsement ballot - and you have to get my first, second and third choices right.) Still, I think Edwards has really gotten a raw deal overall. Edwards is probably the most outspoken pro-labor presidential candidate we've seen in years, and will see for quite a long time. My very simplistic take on the endorsements race is: if Edwards can't win broad support from labor, who on earth can? How would Eugene Debs do in today's upside-down world of interest group politics? Just a bit of a rant, not a real endorsement. Still, let the presidential flame wars begin!

If you've got other labor-related tidbits to share, or if you want to try and guess how I voted in the DFA endorsement, chime in using the comments!

Last week's labor news roundup went pretty well, so I thought I'd follow up with a slight twist this week. The labor-o-sphere has been lighting up this week, partially due to an odious NLRB ruling. Here are a few interesting tidbits I found. Check them out, and add any interesting essays you might have found in the comments:

• Prof. Ellen Dannin, Professor of Law at Pennsylvania State University, posted a long and thought-provoking piece about unions and their stance towards the Wagner Act (which, together with the Taft-Hartley Act, forms the bulwark of US law related to labor organizing) and the NLRB, titled Unasked Questions and Unasked for Answers on the State of Labor Today. The post encourages labor leaders and union activists to challenge privatization and globalization. Drawing on her 2005 book Taking back the worker's law, Dannin also argues for a concerted litigational effort to roll back two key anti-union interpretations of labor law - striker replacement and the employer's right to impose terms if an impasse occurs during contract negotiations (called implementation-upon-impasse). This is a fascinating post and highly recommended. Anyone who's interested in follow-up reading should check out Taking back the worker's law.
• Also at Workling Life, Jonathan Tasini posted about NLRB's recent decision to entertain a union-decertification petition filed shortly after the original union certification law. This decision overthrows NLRB's longstanding precedent to allow a union certification election result to stand for a reasonable amount of time, in order to allow a union a chance to succeed in its collective bargaining efforts. The decision, which is hard to square with the Wagner Act's unequivocal demand that the government favor collective bargaaining arrangements, could potentially make union busting even easier, and unionization yet more difficult.
• An alert reader pointed me to CWA Votes, a website which allows members of Communications Workers of America to sound off on the presidential election and, presumably, sway the union's endorsement decision. This reminds me of SEIU's decision to allow the membership to vote on the 2004 endorsement (resulting in the surprising Dean endorsement), and I think it's a great step.
• A few tidbits of high-profile union news: UAW will negotiate its next contract with Chrysler. I can't really say whether this is a good decision or not, but it seems to me that it might be interesting to gather opinions on this decision through some kind of web-based crowdsourcing system, like an electronic market or broad-based voting system. Such an experiment might yield some very interesting collective wisdom (or, it could get spiked by paid company shills; hard to say.) In other news and UNITE-HERE Tama workers have voted to end a 15-week strike and authorized a 3-year contract.

Any other tidbits? Drop 'em in the comments!

There's been a lot going on in labor news lately. The UAW strike was the big story, but there's more: another state joined the ranks of card-check states (where public employees may organize through card-check campaigns); Change to Win had its second annual convention; and the Teamsters suffered a setback in their School Bus Workers United campaign. Follow me across the flip for more...

• The United Auto Workers held a nationwide, 73,000-worker strike against GM for the first time in decades... and won. Well, they might not have won outright, but they came away with what appears to be a pretty solid deal. There are two major outcomes from this strike: First, the contract itself, which creates a Voluntary Employee Benefit Association (VEBA) which will provide employee and retiree health care in GM's stead. Second, UAW initiated a massive strike, and won.

  I am not sure what I think about the VEBA - it seems like it could cause a lot of trouble down the road, unless we ever manage to create a national health care system. (In which case, I'm guessing, it would become irrelevant.) I'd be curious to see how much influence UAW will be able to hold over the VEBA. Since the organization will control billions of dollars in investment capital, it could potentially have a very powerful voice, through the stock market, in preventing union-busting by other companies. Then again, union pension funds also have this theoretical capability, and as far as I understand things, they don't really act on it.

  What is clear is that this strike was one of the most successful high-profile strikes in recent memory. It was massive, covering 73,000 workers across the country; it had second-order effects, with Teamsters and the machinists union (IAM) respecting the UAW picket lines; and it resulted in what looks like a pretty reasonable compromise (although the UAW membership will be the final judge of that.) That's a remarkable contrast to AMFA's strike of Northwestern two years ago, where the most salient news seemed to be that the labor movement was in disarray.

  I'm also curious to see how this contract affects UAW's future moves. Will the union target Ford or Chrysler for its next round of contract negotiations? Will this agreement strengthen the UAW's hands in organizing Toyota workers?

• In Massachusetts (where I live), Gov. Deval Patrick signed a bill giving state public employees the right to organize by card check. Much like the national Employee Free Choice Act, this bill will help public employees organize unions and prevent supervisor intimidation.

  I'd be curious to see what the long-term effects of this bill, and other efforts to organize public employees, will be. The percentage of the public sector which is organized is already pretty high - something like 30%. As that number grows, how does the labor movement's collective power change and increase? What does this concentrated strength mean in terms of new kinds of pressure which can be brought to bear on private employers?

• Change to Win held its annual convention this week, releasing the latest in its series of surveys on the American Dream. The survey is pretty damning for our economy and the way voters feel about it. Voters are also heavily inclined to believe that unions can help them achieve the dream, with 90% of voters saying that unions can help them achieve a job with a living wage, good health care, good retirement, and opportunities for their children.

  From a political point of view, these are very interesting results, and I think the presidential candidates would be well advised to take note. From an organizational point of view, these results make me wonder whether it's possible to design new kinds of unionization campaigns, similar in some ways to the kinds of religious outreach done by evangelical churches. For example, would it be possible to develop a mass media campaign which would reach out to unorganized workers, and encourage them to join a union (regardless of where they work)? I'm not sure, but these results, combined with the AFL-CIO's 2005 Labor Day survey (which showed that over 50% of workers want to join a union) certainly suggest that such a campaign could be successful.

• In a decision which is sure to impact the School Bus Workers United campaign, First Group and Laidlaw reached an anti-trust agreement with 11 states, which should allow the $2.8 billion merger of the two companies to proceed. In the agreement, the merged company will sell some of its existing operating contracts to other school bus operators, in order to prevent monopolistic practices in certain areas. It's hard to determine how much influence the Teamsters attempted to exert on attorneys general in negotiating this deal. Unfortunately, it appears that the merger will considerably hamper the campaign, as First Group has a long history of union-busting.

Any other tidbits? Drop them in the comments!